Author: Pete Loughlin

16 Mar

Posted at 04:37h in Procurement Best Practices, Procurement Process, Supply Chain, The Rest by
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I despair sometimes. There's been a couple of threads in the purchasing and supply chain media recently that seek to justify the role of procurement. There was Peter Smith's recent spirited defence, (here), of the procurement profession in response to David Cameron's naive attack calling purchasing professionals the "enemies of enterprise". And then there was the article in Supply Management "CFO focus on savings ‘does procurement a huge disservice" which high-lighted some research by Ardent Partners revealing a misperception of the role of procurement by most CFOs:

11 Mar

Posted at 05:28h in Electronic Invoicing by
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As many as 40 per cent of larger businesses across Europe are shying away from E-invoicing according to a report published this week by Iron Mountain. This is because of the perceived complexity and lack of standards, according to YouGov who were commissioned to perform the research. The findings have been published to coincide with the launch of Iron Mountain’s new Business Process Management (BPM) services, details of which can be found here.

03 Mar

Posted at 10:16h in Electronic Invoicing, The Rest by
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Purchasing InsightElectronic Invoicing has for over a decade promised to deliver a fundamental change in the way accounts payable operates. "We will be able to eliminate the non-value add activities."; "AP will move from being a cost centre to a profit centre."; "It will evolve from an administration function to a strategic commercial operation." Promises all made in good faith but promises that were not delivered. The challenges of the numerous tax and legal regulations across the world as well as the reluctance of suppliers to play ball have both been significant blockers. But there's another blocker: e-invoicing doesn't make sense.